The Miracle That Saved A Stabbing Victim

Following the stabbing terror attack at the Gush Etzion Intersection last week, the woman who was stabbed, Nirit Zmora, was taken to Shaarei Tzedek hospital in Jerusalem with the knife still embedded in her back.

The Head of Trauma, Dr Ofer Marin, described the patient as follows: “The knife was  totally embedded into her body, except for 1 cm. Our first concern was that the knife reached her heart. After we negated that possibility, she was stabilized, and we sent her for a CT. In the CT, the whole staff paused and our hearts skipped a beat. The knife was embedded so deep that it entered her vertebral column, and just missed her spinal cord. It was a great miracle, since one more millimeter would have rendered her severely disabled.

“We sent her for a complex surgery, since we had to remove the knife with great precision. Had we not done so, she would have been rendered disabled. These were tense moments. We did everything with great care and succeeded. I can’t remember a similar incident – it is an extremely rare situation. Following the surgery, she is left with minor trauma.”

It is a true miracle, in fact, that those who came to help her did not try to remove the knife themselves, since that may have caused irreversible damage.

You can read an account of what happened by Yaelle Gardner, who was first on the scene: